Certain countries allow the use of postage meters which operate on a "current account" basis. As is well known, a meter includes a register, known as the ascending register, which stores a value representing the total value franked by the postage meter. In a current account system, the ascending register of the meter is read at intervals and the amount used since the last reading is calculated and debited from the user's account. For such systems to work with reasonable economic efficiency accurate readings should be taken from the meters at regular intervals. In practice, this may be difficult to achieve; if the meters are read at regular intervals by inspectors from the authority responsible for receiving payments from the users, accurate readings will be taken but the yearly cost of inspections is high. If the meters are read less frequently then the cash flow of the authority suffers. If the authority relies upon the user to provide intermediate readings between those taken by the authority's inspectors, the user may feel tempted to provide artificially low intermediate readings which again adversely effect the cash flow of the authority even though the balance will be recovered after the next reading taken by the authority's inspectors.
The applicants therefore see a need for a system which ensures that the authority is provided with regular and accurate readings without the need for the meter to be read by the authority's inspector. The applicants according to one embodiment of the invention provide herein a system in which the meter is disabled at preset intervals and in which operation of the meter for the next interval is conditional upon the user providing an accurate meter reading to a data centre. In this way, the authority can be assured of obtaining accurate accounting data at the required preset intervals. Thus the frequency with which the meter is inspected by the authority's inspector may be substantially reduced with a consequent reduction in cost.